Bad Hair

Co-presented by Cinema Tropical

Junior, a nine-year-old boy living in a bustling Caracas tenement with his widowed mother and younger brother, believes he has pelo malo—“bad hair,” a term widely applied to naturally curly ethnic hair—and tries to straighten it so he can look like a popular singer in his school photo. His unemployed yet overworked mother suspects her son is gay, but Grandma is more accepting, teaching Junior to dance to one of her favorite 60s rock ‘n’ roll tunes. Writer-director Mariana Rondón grounds her film in the cultural realities of working-class Venezuela, finding warmth and humor between mother and son even as the uncertainties of pre-adolescence threaten to pull them apart, in a feature that won the Golden Shell (Best Film) at the 2013 San Sebastian Film Festival.